Liability
by Red Room Flare
Summary: He can’t look at her and not think that she knows exactly what’s wrong with the world, even if she won’t tell him what it is. Oneshot. SS, SM. What might’ve been if the Void Card had exacted its price.


_Hey. I've no idea where this one-shot even came from. I really like how it turned out, and hopefully so will you. _

_Summary:_ He can't look at her and not think that she knows exactly what's wrong with the world, even if she doesn't say anything._ What might've been if the Void Card had exacted its price. _

_Disclaimer: Don't own anything._

_Rating: T for Tinniest bit suggestive._

_Canon: Heh… I'd say it's anime Canon up to the very last part of the second movie._

_Observation: Set waaaay into the future. _

* * *

It's dawn. Time to wake up.

He opens his eyes and the first thing in his sight is the firmament through the open doors of the terrace. The sky is still dark, but tinted with the promise of light and rose-colored brush strokes. The breeze coming into the room is warm despite the hour, and it carries the fresh moisture of the jungle and its familiar combination of sweet, sticky scents.

Somewhere far off, a gong is stricken. Its brass voice carries all through the estate, even to the farthest reaches where his rooms are found.

It's the first call of the day. Morning training commences in half an hour, just as soon as the sun peeks from behind the edge of the horizon and illuminates the training grounds.

He hasn't moved at all since he first opened his eyes, and he won't until the body beside him stirs. They always wake up together, he with the light and she with the gong. He knows the ritual well-----she'll open her eyes and immediately seek his face. Once she's found it, her face will change and her mouth will move into the smile that's burned into his memory. She'll reach up and brush her full lips to his in the only soft kiss she ever gives.

If he hasn't dreamed the night before, he'll put his hand against her cheek, tilt her head and kiss her back in full. They'll move against each other and make love until after the second call rings and they're late for training they haven't been required to attend in years.

If he's dreamed, however, he won't kiss her and she'll know immediately that today he's not hers. She'll drop her smile and leave the bed without further ceremony, doing her best to shield her gemstone eyes from his sight so he won't know that she knows that some days are different and how much it hurts her to be reminded that he's not as sure as he pretends that Fate meant for them to be together.

His eyes leave the sky and focus instead on his wife as she slowly awakens from her slumber. All he can see of her is the expanse of her back------smooth, milky skin that's softer and richer than either velvet or silk------and the curve of her neck as it disappears between feathery strands of radiant hair. They've been married for three years. They've known each other since childhood; she's the only lover he's ever had and the only person to have ever seen him cry. She was always his chief adversary, his challenger, his yardstick-----but also his most devoted supported and truest believer.

He's never told her of his dreams, though she's always shared hers with him. She dreams about the future-----about challenges and love and a trio of golden-eyed boys sparring in the first light of day. She often wakes up smiling, convinced that this time her dream is an omen and that his child is finally nestled within her womb. It hasn't happened yet and though he's good and patient each month when he consoles her and tells her that they're young and they've got all the time in the world and that this will happen for them when they're ready for it, she can't help but be afraid. She knows that if she can't give him children then they'll take him away from her and she couldn't bear that, couldn't survive loosing him forever, couldn't stand it if every day of her life was like those mornings when he's so far away that she can't hope to reach him and she feels so utterly alone.

She came close to loosing him once. She doesn't want to go through that ever again.

His dreams are nothing like hers. She sees the future in her visions, and all he sees is…. Nothing. His dreams are incoherent conjugations of touch and scent and shadows of sight, vague sensations that sometimes feel like they might've once been memories but that he can't ever make sense of. He's had them for years; they come and go as they please, leaving him with a sense of loss and nostalgia that only intensifies when he stares into his wife's gemstone eyes.

Lately, the dreams have become more frequent. He feels someone somewhere is trying to tell him something through these visions.

Two nights ago he heard his name within the dream, cried out like a prayer in a childlike, sugar-spun voice vibrant with desperation. It was pronounced wrong, but it was his name still. He felt… he felt he had to get to the speaker and console her, make sure that she knew…

That she knew…

To his wife, he owes everything he is and, more importantly, everything he isn't. Somewhere along the way, so subtly he didn't even notice, she'd changed him. She'd softened his heart and broke down the barriers of ochre in his eyes so that only gold remained.

He wishes he remembered exactly when it happened. He knows it must've been her; who else could it had been? Nobody has ever loved him like she has; she's the only woman--------

---Except for the girl in his dreams. She loves him; it's the only part of the vision that's clear. Whether she's real or imagined, dead or alive, the girl's love for him is a force of burning fervor that stays with him for hours after the dream is over.

How could he kiss his wife after she's been in his mind?

He doesn't feel like a betrayer; he doesn't know this girl and he certainly doesn't love her. He can't control who comes and goes through his unconscious. He loves his wife; he loves her better than anyone else in the world. It's only ever been her within his heart.

So what if he knows she loves him more than he loves her? Someone always loves more, that's the way of things, and between the two of them that's how it's always been. Maybe she just has a greater capacity for love than he does.

And maybe that part of his heart that feels as though dead is only imagined.

No, if he can't kiss her after his dreams it's not because of guilt or betrayal. It's just that these illusion in his head, these visions of a forgotten past that couldn't possibly have been… they leave him with a sense that something's gone utterly amiss and this isn't where he belongs at all and that when she finally stirs and turns to look at him with those brilliant, ruby-red eyes full of love and devotion…

She knows exactly what's wrong with the world, and yet she doesn't say a thing.

But today isn't one of those days. His mind remained blank through the night, and when her lips brush his it doesn't even cross his mind that it could be any other way.

* * *

A thousand miles away and more, she wakes up crying for the third time this week.

Like every other morning, she wishes she could forget that she's waking up to the wrong person and that somewhere, he's doing so too and doesn't even know it.

_

* * *

Red Notes:_

_I think the story's pretty self-explanatory._

_I'd love to know what you thought about it, though. And it'd be wonderful if you reviewed._

_Please?_

_Thanks for reading._

_--Fée _


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